Just curious if it legal already to upload these for personal use of us poor non-american non-gencon fellows and if someone of you already sacrificed expensive free-time for such an endeavor?

And I'm very, very, VERY curious on the new talent trees, and its gonna be a looooooong time till I see the new F&D book...AoR mostly has yet to ship to my country in large enough quantities.

GenCon just ended. Odds are those that got the books haven't recovered from it yet...

I am not sure it was ever legal to upload the talent trees. I think the legality only extends to copying them for personal use. But FFG hasn't stopped Doc and the others so far.

To the OP :

Can't wait to get my Beta book once they sell it online, but you can find usefull bits (like the talent trees) online if you look around a little.

Talking about talent trees, I'm really impressed in the way they structured the careers and specs. You can still find the iconics Guardian, Sentinel and Consular, but they feel less jedi-only and more open. I'll share my opinion about some of the specs with you, feel free to comment.

I really love the Seeker-Hunter spec, a force-user with ranged skills ; that's awesome.

It would have been really cool if they made a spec focused on brawl combat. The Aggressor would have been the perfect spec for it, maybe change Ranged(light) for Brawl, switch the talents that use the lightsaber (Reflect - Saber throw) and put some brawl focused talents like Frenzied attack, Knockdown, Feral Strenght or Natural Brawler.

I also love the way they incorporated the Lightsaber combat forms... It fits well into the specs and doesnt add another layer of rules. But after going throught the combat Forms, I found some points worth mentionning.

Shii-Cho Knight : It was the first combat form, the most basic, developped even before there was lightsaber vs lightsaber combat. To make it feel more basic, I would change 1 Parry talent for another Defensive Training. It would drop Parry to only 3 copies and put it more in line with the other forms.

Makashi Duelist : A lightsaber duel-centric spec, it is really good overall. It could be a good idea to put in a talent like the Dual-phase Mod : ignore the target's melee defense (for a cost of 2 strain).

Soresu Defender : First developped for blaster deflection, it is now considered the ultimate expression of non-aggressive jedi philosophie, but lacks offensive capabilities. Considering those 2 facts, I would change a few things in this tree.

- I'd replace Defensive Stance for Dodge.

- I would replace 1 Parry (to have a total of 3, same has Reflect) for Sum Djem, disarm.

- I'd remove Improved Parry and replace it with Deflecting Slash, where you could strike an engaged opponent after "parrying" a ranged attack.

- Also, since its built to outlast opponents, I'd replace Supreme Parry for a power that restores strain from ennemy threat results.

Ataru Striker : It's a fast-paced aggressive combat style relying on force-assisted attacks, weak against blaster wielding opponents. First I would remove the 2 ranks of Reflect since it's clearly the form's weakness. I would also add a talent like Intuitive Strike (from Starfighter Ace) to augment melee attacks.

Shien Expert (Djem So) : Since this form is built around both range (Shien) and melee (Djem So) defense, I would split the tree in half like the Colonist Politico talent tree : 2 first colums are for ranged defense, the 2 last colums are for melee defense, they meet on the bottom row. Since the form goes throught a sequence of power attack, defense and counterstrike, I'd put an opponer talent like Hawk Bat Swoop and maybe also add Improved Parry in the lot. Also, since it's an aggressive form, I'd remove Supreme Parry.

Niman Disciple : I really like the tree overall. The only thing I would change is add the talent Pushing Slash, the opposite power of Draw Closer : rolling the force die on a lightsaber check, force points used to push away the opponent on a succesful hit.

That's my 2 cents...

What do you guys think ?

To the OP :

Can't wait to get my Beta book once they sell it online, but you can find usefull bits (like the talent trees) online if you look around a little.

Talking about talent trees, I'm really impressed in the way they structured the careers and specs. You can still find the iconics Guardian, Sentinel and Consular, but they feel less jedi-only and more open. I'll share my opinion about some of the specs with you, feel free to comment.

I really love the Seeker-Hunter spec, a force-user with ranged skills ; that's awesome.

It would have been really cool if they made a spec focused on brawl combat. The Aggressor would have been the perfect spec for it, maybe change Ranged(light) for Brawl, switch the talents that use the lightsaber (Reflect - Saber throw) and put some brawl focused talents like Frenzied attack, Knockdown, Feral Strenght or Natural Brawler.

I also love the way they incorporated the Lightsaber combat forms... It fits well into the specs and doesnt add another layer of rules. But after going throught the combat Forms, I found some points worth mentionning.

Shii-Cho Knight : It was the first combat form, the most basic, developped even before there was lightsaber vs lightsaber combat. To make it feel more basic, I would change 1 Parry talent for another Defensive Training. It would drop Parry to only 3 copies and put it more in line with the other forms.

Makashi Duelist : A lightsaber duel-centric spec, it is really good overall. It could be a good idea to put in a talent like the Dual-phase Mod : ignore the target's melee defense (for a cost of 2 strain).

Soresu Defender : First developped for blaster deflection, it is now considered the ultimate expression of non-aggressive jedi philosophie, but lacks offensive capabilities. Considering those 2 facts, I would change a few things in this tree.

- I'd replace Defensive Stance for Dodge.

- I would replace 1 Parry (to have a total of 3, same has Reflect) for Sum Djem, disarm.

- I'd remove Improved Parry and replace it with Deflecting Slash, where you could strike an engaged opponent after "parrying" a ranged attack.

- Also, since its built to outlast opponents, I'd replace Supreme Parry for a power that restores strain from ennemy threat results.

Ataru Striker : It's a fast-paced aggressive combat style relying on force-assisted attacks, weak against blaster wielding opponents. First I would remove the 2 ranks of Reflect since it's clearly the form's weakness. I would also add a talent like Intuitive Strike (from Starfighter Ace) to augment melee attacks.

Shien Expert (Djem So) : Since this form is built around both range (Shien) and melee (Djem So) defense, I would split the tree in half like the Colonist Politico talent tree : 2 first colums are for ranged defense, the 2 last colums are for melee defense, they meet on the bottom row. Since the form goes throught a sequence of power attack, defense and counterstrike, I'd put an opponer talent like Hawk Bat Swoop and maybe also add Improved Parry in the lot. Also, since it's an aggressive form, I'd remove Supreme Parry.

Niman Disciple : I really like the tree overall. The only thing I would change is add the talent Pushing Slash, the opposite power of Draw Closer : rolling the force die on a lightsaber check, force points used to push away the opponent on a succesful hit.

That's my 2 cents...

What do you guys think ?

Hold on to these suggestions and repost them once we get a Beta forum up. This is good stuff and I think a developer should see this.

Russano_Greenstripe on the Reddit thread someone linked to has in turn shared a link to a pdf with photos of pages from the F&D Beta! It's 68 pages, and includes shots of the stuff on Morality, each career and all of their specializations, weapon descriptions, descriptions for all of the lightsaber upgrades, a little of the armor and new equipment stuff, starships, and Force powers! Some of the shots (particularly of the specialization trees) are somewhat unreadable, but I was still able to get a good sense of what each tree is doing.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/8p04kp35v59290x/Force+and+Destiny+r.pdf

WOW! :o

I seem to recall that in the EotE beta there were some Force power upgrades that were determined by the user's characteristics (something like Influence affecting an additional number of targets, via a Magnitude upgrade, equal to Willpower, I think). See a lot of stuff like that here, and wonder if it will be held over when this moves from beta to the final release.

I think some of the powers will get tweaked downward with the completed version, and I think Donovan's idea for Heal, in having it restore Strain as the basic power, and require an upgrade to restore Wounds makes more sense than the reverse we have here. Harm also seems like it starts out a bit strong, and the text on the Mastery upgrade indicating that it's Force Lightning at that point seems underwhelming. I mean, yeah, criticals are going to be pretty dangerous, but the power can do everything else that Force Lightning does up to that point, so Mastery just seems like it's moving to a much more powerful FL.

I like the Healing Trance talent!

The lightsaber forms talent trees are pretty cool!

I'm a little disappointed that I didn't see Intense Focus in any of the trees.

I think there's perhaps too much "add X defense" to be found scattered around, although I suppose that's to be expected of a book building Jedi.